1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an adhesive tape for painting and a method of manufacturing the tape. More specifically, this invention relates to an adhesive tape for painting that is used in painting vehicles such as automobiles and motorcycles and a method of manufacturing the tape.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Recently, there are cases that outer surfaces of body parts of vehicles such as doors, hoods, fenders, roofs of recreational vehicles and side covers and fuel tanks of motorcycle, are painted with two-tone color for providing beautiful images and high quality feeling. Such two-tone color painting has been conventionally carried out by spray painting in which paint is sprayed onto a painted surface after a preliminary treatment such as a primary coating has been made.
Such spray painting requires several steps including spraying a paint and then drying it in each of painted colors, so that it takes a relatively long time to complete all the painting steps, thus resulting in lowered productivity. Further, volatile organic medium is discharged into the atmosphere in each spraying step causing environmental problems.
In order to solve these problems, a coloring method using a colored film for painting has been proposed. According to this method, a colored film having a pressure-sensitive adhesive layer is attached onto a part to be painted for providing coloring. As for the colored films, several types of films have been proposed. For example, a colored film is know that is produced by adding a paint or a pigment into a resin material and then forming the material into a film using a flow casting method and a colored film having a pressure-sensitive adhesive layer containing a pigment for coloring.
However, these colored films do not exhibit satisfactory color development and do not have sufficient reproducibility since the paint or pigment is contained in the resin material or adhesive in a dispersed state. In particular, in colored films of metallic color, uneven coloring (flashing) or streaking is likely to emerge, thus leading to the case that the value of the product is markedly impaired.
In addition, the colored layers or adhesive layers of these colored films have to have a certain thickness for concealing the ground color of the surface to be painted, so that the films have less flexibility. This also results in a poor followability when attaching the film to a part having a large area or a corner part, and therefore the attaching operation is troublesome.